The Atmospheric Limb Tracker for Investigation of the Upcoming Stratosphere (ALTIUS) is a satellite mission proposed by the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (BIRA-IASB) and implemented under the European Space Agency (ESA)'s EarthWatch programme. The main objective of ALTIUS is to monitor the distribution and evolution of stratospheric ozone in the Earth's atmosphere. It will also measure a suite of other stratospheric parameters which are important for climate research, in particular nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and aerosols extinction. The mission is scheduled for launch in 2026 from the Guiana Space Centre. More information about ALTIUS can be found here.
For this project, the stratospheric modelling group made an observing system evaluation experiment (OSSE) using BASCOE to evaluate the values of ALTIUS ozone profiles compared to the current reference satellite instrument MLS. In the future, BASCOE will also be used to contribute to the validation of ALTIUS and to provide daily concentration of ozone based on ALTIUS data assimilation.
Reference:
Errera, Q., Dekemper, E., Baker, N., Debosscher, J., Demoulin, P., Mateshvili, N., Pieroux, D., Vanhellemont, F. and Fussen, D., On the capability of the future ALTIUS ultraviolet–visible–near- infrared limb sounder to constrain modelled stratospheric ozone, Atmos. Meas. Tech., 14(6), pp 4737–4753, 2021, DOI: 10.5194/amt-14-4737-2021
Contact Person: Quentin Errera.
